“God took care of us in miraculous ways”
The first year in the Simple Church movement was financially tough for Ron and LaCresha Longwell
Dallas. Ron Longwell has been a part of the Simple Church movement for about a year. Before that he was a pastor in three different evangelical congregations for a total of about 15 years.
He emphasizes that a lot of things were good during the time in the traditional church, but that it also was tough and frustrating. Even though they had a focus on Bible reading and sermons, he never saw very much spiritual growth among the members.
– People would say that they appreciated the sermon and that they learned a lot from it, but I just never really saw a lot of real life change. I never saw people becoming disciples and depening their commitment to Jesus, he says.
Something built-in
Another thing that made Ron frustrated was all the expectations that members had on him and that at times seemed really unreasonable. He felt increasingly unable to meet everybody’s expectations. First he thought that the situation was attached to the specific congregation he worked in, but when he came to his second and third congregation things were the same there.
– I began to really think, there’s something inherent in the way we’re doing church, that makes it really hard to do the kind of ministry that I felt called to do, he says.
More dialogue
Ron started thinking about what really leads to spiritual growth, he read a lot and prayed to God a lot about this. He came to the conclusion that more dialogue was required instead of monologue and they started up home groups in the congregation.
– That was better, but it also became pretty obvious that there are some difficulties built into that as well. The more I got to learn about it, the more I realized that a lot of people that kind of started the cellgroup movement, had since moved on to house churches, he says.
God challenged
At the same time as Ron learned more about house churches, he discovered a course in missional living with an aim at organic churches. The course was offered by a Christian university in Texas. After he had found out more about this course and he and his wife had prayed over it, they were increasingly convinced that God wanted them to take it. It was a hard decision to make, as they lived in Pennsylvania and did not have any jobs in Texas.
– But we just really felt that the Lord was calling us to do that, so we put our house up for sale and made plans to move, Ron says.
When they moved to Texas with their son last year and rented an appartment there, they still hadn’t succeeded in selling their house and they didn’t have any jobs. After a while his wife Lachresha got a job, but their financial situation was still very tough, with only one salary and both the appartment rent and house mortgage rent.
Ron concludes that their last year has been their hardest year ever financially, but spiritually their best year ever. He gets tears in his eyes, when he tells of how faithfully God took care of them.
– There were times when we couldn’t pay our bills, there were times when we didn’t have money to buy food. But at every point along that, God just took care of us, in miraculous ways. God has become more alive and more accessible to us than he has ever been, which is wonderful.
Authentic community
They have now been a part of the same house church since January this year and Ron thinks that a lot of things are different compared to the traditional church. The way decisions are made, he thinks is one of the biggest differences, where the discussion is more friendly in his house church than what he was used to earlier. Another important difference is the fellowship and that there are not so many scheduled activities.
– I’d say we have better opportunities for real community with people. It’s not just that we’re not doing as much activity, but the things that we are doing are really meaningful and really connect us to God and one another.
DAVID SPÅNBERGER
08-619 24 00
Picture text 1: Dagen told on 11 September about the growing house church movement in the USA
Picture text 2: Ron and Lacresha Longwell and their son Nathan have had a tough year financially, but they all think it has been worth it.
